Standing up to the big-name insurance companies is never easy to do, especially when they say they put patients first but don’t follow through. Sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands. A Missouri healthcare advocate steps in for people when they can’t battle major insurers by themselves. In a recent video, she shows a patient how to advocate for themselves when an agent doesn’t want to help prevent them from going blind.
“Teaching patients how to advocate for themselves is the future of advocacy,” Claudia Holley starts her TikTok video with. At the start of the video, you can hear Claudia’s patient admit she can’t take a mere 18 steps from her bedroom to the bathroom and begs them to do something. Claudia at that point speaks up for her patient, telling the insurer she’s been receiving an infusion she’s needed for quite some time. Now, the insurer needs proof of why she can’t try a different treatment. Claudia continues on, telling the insurance company she could “lose her entire ability to see” without the infusion.
The insurer tries to say they understand, but Claudia shoots them down. “You don’t understand how much of an urgent matter this is,” she argues. They try to give her the go-around and tell her this is handled by a different department. What’s frustrating, and you can see it on Claudia’s face, is that she was sent to this specific department because the last one said they’d help. Claudia raises the temperature on the insurance agent further. She questions how they’re going to have her pay her monthly premium just for them to deny her treatment.
One commenter acknowledged, “This is what happens when you have a for-profit healthcare system,” one person argued. Another person shared their personal story of how this happened to them, “I ended up with a permanent disability bc the insurance insisted I needed physical therapy for 10 months before they’d cover an mri for blunt force injury to the top of my foot. By the time they covered it, it’s healed wrong and I’m now in pain 24/7, can’t be fixed.”
This is what happens when insurers wait too long and play around with lives. People literally lose their lives because of negligence. That’s why healthcare advocates play such an important role in the way so many people live their lives. In the end, Claudia (or her patient) didn’t get any results from that department. Instead, she gets sent to another department.
